Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#291

Post by christkv » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:45 AM UTC

yomkippur wrote: post #249

aszantu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're eating a lot of plants, look into phyto-hormones, those might be preventing fertility. There are a few anecdotal stories from the carnivore/keto forums, that fertility came back after cutting out carbs. Edit: Some Artificial hormones are found in plastic, rates go up when it's recycled plastics.

so soy protein, dried or boiled soybeans, tofu, tempeh, and meatless soy products....but Koreans have been eating it forever. perhaps the processing in mass industrial scale has impact? yeah I heard of the plastic theory and I think the air pollution in Korea is an overlooked factor. The fine dust particulates must have some impact on the reproduction system. maybe even Ramen? Koreans consume a ton of instant ramen.…

If it’s contraceptives it might be possible to create a comparison group with some stricter religious group that does not take contraceptives and measure fertility levels between that group and a group that did take contraceptives.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#292

Post by amrocha » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:45 AM UTC

nopzor wrote: post #78

amrocha wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Declining birth rates have nothing to do with oppressing women. Worker exploitation, poor social safety net, and wealth disparity are squarely to blame.

the gp is trying to make the point that countries with higher birth rates tend to be poorer and/or more oppressive.

I know what they're saying. I'm saying that's wrong. Korea isn't even particularly equalitarian either.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#293

Post by rayiner » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:45 AM UTC

So my dad spent his career working on US family planning efforts abroad. (We came here from Bangladesh because of my dad's work at a US public health company.) And the results have been positive in many ways: the fertility is down from 7 when my dad was born to 2 today. At the same time, the whole shtick was kind of "there's too many Asians!" I can't help but think that these efforts condemned these countries to long term decline. There was a generation who had it ingrained in them that having kids is bad. We have three kids (about average in my American wife's family) but my parents definitely gave us the side-eye when we got pregnant with the third. I wonder if Korea is Bangladesh's future? Maybe Islam will help avoid a sub-1.0 fertility rate, who knows.

The decline in fertility has a palpable effect on society. Despite being raised in the US, this country, at least the places where I've lived in coastal metros, feels so lonely to me. I've felt that especially acutely since we had kids. We had our first at 27, and for the better part of a decade we were the odd-one-out among most of our friends showing up to places with a kid. There is a numeric basis for this feeling. In 1960, when the U.S. fertility rate was 3.5, fully 35% of the population was children. Today, it's 22%. You can see that difference just around your neighborhood.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#294

Post by pengaru » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:46 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #186

pengaru wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just a lump in the population vs. age graph and you're fixating on the back side of the lump as if it's inevitably going towards zero. After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see a lack of traffic congestion, abundance of housing, lack of competitors for their now abundant resources, and lack of disproportionately large population of unproductive elderly dependents. Wanna guess what h…

> How about some DATA: go to https://population.io , select Rep. of Korea, plug in some age/gender b.s. and scroll down to "Age Distribution" at the left column. Now look to the left of ~20yo (younger than 20), it's a nearly horizontal line. What does that tell you? Yeah, something is definitely wrong with the site because actual population pyramid data looks much more alarming: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

Nice catch! It looks like population.io's UN data is only real estimates up to 2010 then projections according to the Methodology pop-up.

Which looks pretty divergent for the last 5 years specifically, judging from

https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr...

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#295

Post by CogitoCogito » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:48 AM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #251

Thorrez wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. How is 1 biological kid worse than 0 biological kids? It sounds like decafninja is likely planning on having 0 biological kids.

Within the wider context of population decline due to low birth rates, both are bad because both lead to population decline anyway. 2 kids is a hard minimum for maintaining population count, 3 or more kids for increasing population. As for what decafninja (or any individual for that matter) decides upon in the bedroom, that's for him to decide and his business alone. I'm not going to comment because it's none of my b…

Why do we need to maintain our population count? Why is it a problem if it declines?

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#296

Post by SilasX » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:48 AM UTC

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #261

SilasX wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "buying a home" just means buying a shoebox apartment, why is it important in the first place for starting a family? Doesn't that mean you're just as well off renting?

Ah I see your confusion. You’ve missed that renting is more expensive than buying a home and gets more expensive each year, possibly forcing you to move away from your local area and hence your child’s school. There are some places where rent controls and renters rights can mean renting can work for families. But few places are like Berlin.

That depends entirely on the rent/buy ratio and other factors like transaction costs and frequency of moving. It’s not a “confusion”, especially in places with competitive housing markets like Japan.

Since your following sentence agrees that renting isn’t universally cheaper, then you need to actually bring some relevant information on that point to have a substantive, non-confused comment.

What do you think your comment was accomplishing beyond calling confused? This discussion still lacks any evidence whatsoever that renting in Korea implies frequent relocation.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#297

Post by tcj_phx » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:49 AM UTC

decafninja wrote: post #106

My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time. Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affe…

One problem of modern medicine is the use of fake-hormones.

When Progesterone USP (bio-identical) is applied to the skin, it gets into circulation and avoids first pass metabolization by liver. When the appropriate solvent is used to dissolve the Progesterone USP powder, the progesterone is transported through the liver.

Steroidogenesis refers to the process whereby the body makes steroids for itself. The key jump - from cholesterol to pregnenolone - is facilitated with Vitamin A and thyroid (T3).

Know a couple who were trying to conceive, after suppressing her fertility with fake hormones (and an IUD) for maybe 8+ years. Lots of miscarriages. They eventually went for IVF, which didn't work either. They gave up and started getting their house ready for adoption. Then they got surprised. I don't think she used topical Progesterone, just the megadoses in Prometrium (liver can't destroy it all on the first pass).

Best wishes to you & your wife.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#298

Post by nunb » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:49 AM UTC

decafninja wrote: post #274

nunb wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this topic very interesting. My observation (anecdata-lly, but I would love to see RCTs or perhaps a cleanly designed ANOVA study) is that these symptoms of infertility are particularly (world-wide) prevalent in people who have (usually undiagnosed) metabolic syndrome & low cholecalciferol. In almost all South-east Asian countries in particular, I have noticed high levels of sucrose consumption so I am curious…

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I'm Korean born, but spent most of my life in the US. My wife is a much more recent immigrant so she is a product of the Korean education system as well as the Korean corporate world and all that entails. We have some friends that have adopted, so are aware of the potential issues. Most of them seem perfectly fine, but one had some initial problems with the child adjusting to his…

Probably because it comes through as tall claims based on anecdata? But I've lived in Europe, America, Asia, ME & Australia (also visited every SEA country) and the prevalence of male feminization & rich-people obesity (esp central adiposity) in certain regions is quite staggering.

And almost every single person I know personally with difficulty conceiving (various races, various countries, various diagnoses including ectopic/fibroids/undiagnosed) had some obvious-to-me metabolic-syndrome/cholecalciferol/ferritin issues going on, particularly Asian-sub-continentals in northern sun-starved climates who were not supplementing cholecalciferol.

Aside: How does one tell downvotes? I suppose I should look in the FAQ. IIRC only established members can downvote. Despite my account being from HN's 2007 inception, I do not have enough established-karma to have my own downvote button. So I generally don't bother about it, as it's a bit of a circular dead-end karma-spiral which I had thought the HN mechanics were supposed to avoid.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#299

Post by Dalewyn » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:51 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #276

Dalewyn wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Men today produce fewer sperm than in the past, and the sperm are less healthy. The question, then, is what could be causing this decline in fertility[0]. This has everything to do with monogamous relationships and marriages in most of the developed human world. In the natural world, there are many factors at play that help ensure only the "healthiest" males conceive with females. Most factors are indirect, such as…

This seems to be based on the idea that the only feedback mechanism for improving sperm is to have sperm fight with other sperm. That's not correct though. Whatever trait in sperm leads to pregnancy more often will be evolutionarily selected for. There doesn't need to be any direct fight between sperm.

The basis for how "healthy" sperm is is implied to be how mobile it is, and in an environment where sperm are competing to reach the egg first, being more mobile is absolutely a trait that will be evolutionarily selected for because less mobile ("less healthy") sperm will conceive less.

But in an environment where that doesn't matter anymore, it's only natural that sperm "health" will consequently deterioriate. Natural selection doesn't select for "the best", it only selects for "good enough". And if "unhealthy" sperm that can't move sufficently is "good enough", well so be it. Especially if we take factors like in-vitro and artificial insemination into account, those really remove the "health" of sperm from the equation of pregnancy.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#300

Post by decafninja » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #237

decafninja wrote: post #106

My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time. Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affe…

What type of adoption are you thinking of? From what I've heard, adopting a newborn is very difficult.

Not expecting a newborn at all, not do we think we want one.

Either a toddler or around kindergarten age seems realistic, based on what I’ve seen with other couples who’ve adopted in our social circle.